


Rachidian Gothic

by triggernometry



Category: Flight Rising
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 04:19:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17053001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggernometry/pseuds/triggernometry
Summary: Written for the lair gothic meme that went around the tumbls the other day.





	Rachidian Gothic

**Author's Note:**

> Creosote County is the name for the territory my dragons inhabit. Rachidian is the name of the Creosote County seat; it includes the town proper (the Flat), the Gold Dust Table (amaranth fields), and the Orchard.

Pilgrims set up camps beyond the edge of town, beyond the circles of watchfire glow. Sometimes they tell you stories about their experiences at night; a curious whispering outside their tent, pattering on the roof, shapes pressing in on the other side of the canvas. You tell them it's just locusts flying night-blind, trying to orient to the moons hidden behind the miasma. The black blizzard swarms are still four months away.

You need a job. You want to do your part. You sign up to help tend the watchfires at night. Your mentor shows you how to light the cedar logs in the brazier; you watch the light extend only so far into the night, and the distinction between light and dark is sharp enough to cut. It looks empty out there, you say. Your mentor's face blossoms with eyes. It isn't, they say.

You visit the Mercantile & Sundries almost every day. You always make sure to stick your hand in the discount box and root around before leaving. You pull out a rock, heavy but perfectly formed to your palm. The shopkeep all but orders you to take it. She doesn't say why. When the hand catches in your mane at the edge of town later that night, you know why.

No one's supposed to go into the Big Tent after nightfall. When the music starts playing and the lights start moving around inside it at midnight, no one goes to investigate. No one's supposed to go into the Big Tent after nightfall.

You need a job. You want to do your part. There's an orchard on the edge of town. They always seem to have need of extra help. The whole town turns out when the flyers show up in autumn; not a one looks at a flyer in spring. In time, you decide to hedge your bets and avoid answering the flyers altogether.

The voice on the radio is warm honey on your ears. The voice is charming and funny; the songs he plays, even the sad ones, are bright notes filling your day. You feel disappointment when he says good night and the signal goes dark. One time you decide to leave the radio on long after the signal cuts out. After that, you come to dread the voice's final farewell.

The dust gets everywhere. In your house, in your clothes, in your pores. Your spurs are dull and mute with it. You complain to your neighbour, how can anyone put up with this much dust? She asks you if you've tried saying please. In desperation, you follow her advice. You wake to clean floors and shining spurs in the morning.

You need a job. You want to do your part. With black blizzards on the horizon, you pitch in to help repair the nets around town. You notice no one bothers putting up nets around the amaranth fields; the homesteader up there waves you off when you offer to put some up for her, free of charge. The black blizzards come, and you watch them split like a rattler's tongue around the fields, not a single locust to land on a single grain of amaranth. They've been forewarned.

The chickens that wander the town are even-tempered, confident, slow to worry. The townsfolk treat them as equals. You swear you even once heard someone say excuse me to a chicken they bumped with their foot. Small town eccentricities. You wake in the night to tormented screaming outside your window, and draw the shade in time to see a faceless, shapeless thing disappearing under a hundred hungry beaks.

The Wound Road always goes east from town, toward the Sea. Sometimes, you see the Wound Road going west, through the base of the Rim. You tell no one. They will only try to stop you, when the time comes.

You're standing at the edge of the Orchard at noon. You pick a potash peach from a tree. The peach is rose gold, fat with juice. It is the sweetest thing you have ever tasted. You're standing at the edge of the Orchard at midnight. The trees are pruned and bare; it's the middle of the dry season. Your hands are empty. Your fingers are slick and red.

You need a job. You want to do your part. There's a want-ad for construction help: somebody's building a new house in town. You dig what you think will be the foundation plot until your equipment breaks through a window in the dirt. By the Eleven, the person who hired you says, you found it. They slip a few more coins into your hand at the end of the day and tell you not to worry about the broken glass. Didn't feel a thing, they say.


End file.
